WEBVTT
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All across America and around the world, this
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is Veterans Radio. This is Veterans Radio. Good
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day. I'm Jim Fosson. I'm the Officer of the Deck
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today here on Veterans Radio and thanks for joining
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us. We've got some interesting stories for you.
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We always want to remind you, you can find more
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about Veterans Radio at its Facebook site or
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at the web, veteransradio .org. Where we're on
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the web 24 -7, you can find a lot of our podcasts
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there as well. We post new ones every Tuesday,
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so you can get a new story, a new interview,
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something you didn't know before by going to
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veteransradio .org. And before we get started,
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we want to thank our sponsors. First up, We want
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to thank Legal Help for Veterans. Legal Help
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for Veterans fights for veterans disability rights
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all across the nation. You can reach them at
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800 -693 -4800 or on the web at legalhelpforveterans
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.com. We just want to remind you that veterans
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radio podcasts are available on all your favorite
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Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts, iHeartRadio,
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phone or your computer or your laptop or your
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tablet, but listen in to Veterans Radio Podcasts.
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We post something new every week and you're going
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to find it informative. The content for this
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interview is coming from our friends C Douglas
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sterner and his buddies who write Beyond belief
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books stories about American heroes quite frankly
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Untold stories oftentimes and stories that maybe
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have been forgotten. So we're bringing those
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forward to you. Here's one That's got a little
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aspect of Hollywood spycraft all kinds of interesting
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things that I think you're gonna find interesting.
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Imagine for a second that you are holding this
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massive just incredibly lucrative Hollywood contract.
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Okay. You are officially crowned the most beautiful
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man in the movies. It is the early 1940s and
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you basically have everything society insists
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you should want, right? Like money, fame, Adulation.
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The absolute dream for most people, yeah. Exactly.
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And then you just throw it all in the trash.
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You walk away from every bit of it to jump out
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of a bomber behind enemy lines. I mean, it sounds
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less like a biography and more like a rejected
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script for some spy thriller. It really does.
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Because it just defies human nature. We are so
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wired to seek security. When someone achieves
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the absolute pinnacle of financial and social
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security, they don't typically volunteer for
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a suicide mission in a Yugoslavian combat zone.
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But that is exactly what happened. Today, we
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are doing a deep dive into the life of Sterling
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Hayden. And if you are a film buff, you almost
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certainly know his face. Oh, definitely. He was
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the corrupt Captain McCluskey in The Godfather
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and the utterly unhinged General Jack D. Ripper
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in Dr. Strangelove. Such iconic roles. Right.
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But beneath that incredibly recognizable Hollywood
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facade was a hidden just astonishing reality.
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He was a United States Marine, an OSS operative,
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and a man who went by the fake name John Hamilton.
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And really the tension between the man on the
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screen and the man in the shadows is the entire
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core of his story. We are looking at a life defined
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by violent extremes. It's this relentless tug
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of war between profound authenticity and, you
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know, total artifice. And that is our mission
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for you on this deep dive. We are exploring the
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wild paradoxical life of a man who was just desperate
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to escape the make believe of Hollywood for the
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brutal grit of reality. You'll really examine
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what his journey teaches you about the search
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for genuine purpose in a world that is just so
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often built on illusions. Welcome to the deep
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dive. So to understand why a man would throw
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away a literal Hollywood empire, we really have
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to look at the chaotic foundation of his childhood.
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Oh, absolutely. Hayden wasn't born into stability
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at all. His early life practically inoculated
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him against trusting anything that looked like
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traditional success. OK, let's unpack this. Because
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his childhood in New Jersey was legitimately
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turbulent. To put it mildly. Right. So he was
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born Sterling Relia Walter in 1916. And the sources
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recount this incredibly dark foundational moment
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when he was a kid. Get this. Young Sterling shoots
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a slingshot at a neighbor's wife. Just, you know,
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standard badly behaved kid stuff, but... The
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reaction is beyond extreme. His father is so
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furious that he beats the boy with a wet stick.
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Sterling is screaming and the father is so overwhelmed
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by the rage and the stress of the moment that
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he actually collapses from a stroke right there
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on the spot. It is just a staggering thing to
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happen to a family. Yeah, he never recovers and
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dies a few months later. And Hayden is just nine
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years old when this happens. And that kind of
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sudden catastrophic loss. I mean, it completely
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shatters a child's perception of safety. and
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then the environment only becomes more unpredictable.
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Right, because his mother remarries. Exactly.
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She marries a man named James Watson Hayden,
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which is where we get the name Sterling Walter
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Hayden. But this stepfather, they called him
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Daddy Jim, he is the archetypal serial failure.
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He was always chasing the big score that just
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never materialized. Right. The classic grifter
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mentality. Yeah. The family would literally check
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into these opulent high end hotels that they
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had absolutely no way of paying for. It's so
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brazen. I know. And then in the dead of night,
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young Sterling and his mother would have to sneak
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out down the fire escapes and just skip the bill.
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So he is living this completely transient life.
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They are drifting up and down the East Coast,
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constantly running from the reality of their
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poverty. all while pretending to be wealthy.
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And think about the psychological impact of that
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on a kid. You have a child growing up in an environment
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where the adults project wealth but possess literally
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nothing. Yeah, the rules of success, the authority
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figures around him. It all feels completely arbitrary.
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It feels fake. Totally. So it makes perfect sense
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that he would reject traditional structures.
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He despised school, flunked the third grade,
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and eventually just dropped out altogether in
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the 10th grade. He needed something solid. He
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was starving for reality. And by age 16, he just
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runs away to the Portland Ox. And he actually
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finds his first real home on the sea. Yeah. He
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signs on as a ship's boy on a schooner called
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the Puritan, making a whopping $10 a month. Id
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bunny. Right. But the thing is, he is an absolute
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prodigy at this. By 1936, he is sailing around
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the entire world on a ship called the Yankee.
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Because the ocean offered the exact opposite
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of a stepfather's life, right? On land, life
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was unpredictable and full of empty promises.
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But out on the ocean, cause and effect are absolute.
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There is no bluffing a storm. No, you can't talk
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your way out of a hurricane. Exactly. If you
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don't tie a knot correctly, the sail tears. If
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you don't read the weather, you sink. It is this
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pure, unforgiving meritocracy. There is this
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incredible detail from the sources that highlights
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this perfectly. It is 1938, and he is caught
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in a howling gale during a maritime race. Oh,
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this story's wild. The wind is deafening, the
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deck is pitching wildly, and he physically crawls
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out along a spar -like, suspended directly over
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the churning ocean to secure a torn mane gaff.
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The sheer mechanical reality of that moment.
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You just can't fake your way through a gale.
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You really can't. But the bitter irony here is
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that this very ruggedness, this undeniable reality
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is what yanks him right back into a world of
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total artificiality. Because a newspaper photographer
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happens to capture an image of him at a race.
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Right. And he is this handsome six foot four
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blonde rugged sailor. The paper runs the photo
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and the caption reads, sailor like movie idol.
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And boom, the studio executives at Paramount
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Pictures see it and immediately offer him a contract
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for $250 a week. Which was just staggering money
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back then. Especially for a guy making 10 bucks
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a month a few years prior. Okay, I have to look
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at this through an analogy because it is so strange.
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It is like someone taking a ridiculously high
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-paying corporate temp job strictly to fund their
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weekend hobby. That's a great way to put it.
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He wasn't starry -eyed about the silver screen
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at all. He explicitly told people his only plan
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was to endure Hollywood just long enough to make
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$5 ,000, buy his own schooner and get right back
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on the water. We can really see a distinct pattern
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solidifying here. Notice how Hayden thrived under
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the undeniable laws of the ocean because they
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were real. Yeah. But he chafed violently against
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arbitrary control. He rejected the authority
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of school teachers and he immediately detested
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the authority of studio executives who tried
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to micromanage how he stood or how he smiled
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or how he spoke. The sea demanded authenticity,
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but Hollywood basically just demanded a mask.
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And that mask started to feel incredibly suffocating,
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especially as the rest of the world was quite
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literally catching fire. Right, because it's
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1941. World War II is ravaging Europe, and Hayden
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is standing on a soundstage in California wearing
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makeup. It had to feel absurd to him. He is shooting
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his very first film, which is a movie called
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Virginia. And that set is where a major pivot
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happens for him. He meets his co -star, Madeline
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Carroll. She is fascinating in her own right.
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Oh, absolutely. She was 10 years older, English
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-born, and she really shared his deep disdain
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for the shallowness of the movie business, especially
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with a global war raging. And her connection
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to the war was very visceral. Her own sister
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had actually been killed by German bombing in
00:10:04.590 --> 00:10:06.490
the London Blitz. So she wasn't just detached
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from it. Not at all. She had actually turned
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her personal French chateau into an orphanage
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for displaced children. She wasn't just talking
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about the war at Hollywood dinner parties. She
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was actively trying to heal the wounds it caused.
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Carol really represented the kind of tangible
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real world impact Hayden was starving for. Catalyzed
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by her influence and his own deep -seated restlessness,
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he decides to just break his contract with Paramount.
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Which you didn't really do back then. No, the
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studio system owned you. But what's surprising
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is that he manages to leave on good terms. How
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does he pull that off? The studio head, Barney
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Balaban, actually recognizes that Hayden's desire
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to do something worthwhile is totally genuine.
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It wasn't just some contract negotiation tactic
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to get more money. So the Hollywood actor pivots
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to aspiring soldier. And he doesn't just sign
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up at a local recruiting office. He manages to
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secure a meeting with wild Bill Donovan. Just
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casually meeting with one of the most important
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figures in intelligence. Right. And for context,
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Donovan is the coordinator of information at
00:11:08.120 --> 00:11:10.600
this time, and he goes on to create the OSS,
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the Office of Strategic Services, which is the
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direct precursor to the CIA. Donovan clearly
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sees something in this actor and sends him to
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Scotland to train with the British SOE. The SOE,
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which was the Special Operations Executive, essentially
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Winston Churchill's secret army tasked with conducting
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espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied
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Europe. Put yourself in Hayden's boots for a
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second. He is the only American in this group.
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Wow. He has zero military experience. and he
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is training alongside hardened, legal combat
00:11:43.720 --> 00:11:46.059
veterans from Poland, France, and Norway men
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who have literally lost their countries and whose
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only goal is to parachute back into Nazi -occupied
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territory to kill the enemy. And he just has
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to keep up with them. He had to learn the mechanics
00:11:54.559 --> 00:11:57.379
of silent killing, demolition, irregular warfare,
00:11:57.519 --> 00:11:59.980
and surprisingly, he earned their respect. He
00:11:59.980 --> 00:12:02.279
wasn't just a Hollywood pretty boy to them. Right.
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He trained grueling hours during the day and
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drank whiskey with them at night while listening
00:12:07.110 --> 00:12:10.070
to the BBC broadcasts. He had finally found a
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tribe that dealt strictly in reality. But then
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reality hits a little too hard. Yeah it does.
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Because on his tenth parachute jump during training,
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he lands terribly in a quarry. He breaks his
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ankle, he tears up his knee, and he physically
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displaces his backbone. Just a devastating injury.
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He is medically broken and sent back to the United
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States. And this is where his decision -making
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gets really confusing for me. Like I have to
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push back on his logic here because what he does
00:12:36.440 --> 00:12:39.899
next borders on the absurd. Let's trace the sequence
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of events because it is a wild ride. OK, so he
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gets back. The Navy approaches him. They know
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he is a master mariner, right? So they offer
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him a commission as an ensign. They tell him,
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hey, take a desk job while your back heals. Makes
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perfect sense. But Hayden is insulted by this.
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He demands a PT boat, a patrol torpedo boat.
00:12:58.799 --> 00:13:01.379
For those who don't know, that is a fast, heavily
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armed, wooden vessel used for attacking larger
00:13:04.340 --> 00:13:07.019
warships at close range. Very dangerous work.
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Very. And when the Navy says they can't guarantee
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him combat. command of a PT boat, he just rejects
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the commission entirely. He essentially walks
00:13:15.500 --> 00:13:18.279
away from an officer's rank and a safe desk job
00:13:18.279 --> 00:13:21.529
because it's simply isn't dangerous enough. Exactly.
00:13:22.029 --> 00:13:24.690
And wait, it gets wilder. After rejecting the
00:13:24.690 --> 00:13:28.590
Navy, he sails down to Curaçao, gets blackout
00:13:28.590 --> 00:13:31.830
drunk with submarines, and uses his newly acquired
00:13:31.830 --> 00:13:34.950
British commando skills to physically hurl a
00:13:34.950 --> 00:13:37.269
hotel manager out into the street. Oh my god.
00:13:37.289 --> 00:13:40.470
Yeah. He gets arrested. His Hollywood agent has
00:13:40.470 --> 00:13:43.100
to fly down to bail him out and then After all
00:13:43.100 --> 00:13:45.460
of that, he goes to the recruitment office and
00:13:45.460 --> 00:13:48.399
enlists in the Marine Corps as a private, the
00:13:48.399 --> 00:13:50.519
absolute lowest rank. Just starting from the
00:13:50.519 --> 00:13:52.860
very bottom. Is this just wild self -sabotage
00:13:52.860 --> 00:13:55.360
from a guy who misses the adrenaline of Scotland?
00:13:55.659 --> 00:13:58.289
What's fascinating here is that... From the outside,
00:13:58.710 --> 00:14:00.950
it absolutely looks like chaotic self -sabotage.
00:14:01.029 --> 00:14:04.169
I mean, it looks crazy. Totally. But psychologically,
00:14:04.389 --> 00:14:06.509
it is entirely consistent with his character.
00:14:06.690 --> 00:14:09.090
It was a total refusal of unearned privilege.
00:14:09.389 --> 00:14:11.870
Ah, I see. He felt that accepting a desk job
00:14:11.870 --> 00:14:13.929
as a commissioned officer, simply because he
00:14:13.929 --> 00:14:16.750
was a famous, handsome sailor, was just playing
00:14:16.750 --> 00:14:18.649
another fake Hollywood role. He didn't want to
00:14:18.649 --> 00:14:21.490
be a prop. Exactly. He suffered from massive
00:14:21.490 --> 00:14:24.350
imposter syndrome. He needed to earn his stripes
00:14:24.350 --> 00:14:26.940
in the mud. at the absolute bottom of the hierarchy
00:14:26.940 --> 00:14:29.700
to prove to himself that he wasn't a fraud. And
00:14:29.700 --> 00:14:32.039
the crazy part is he actually does it. He really
00:14:32.039 --> 00:14:34.480
does. He heals up. He goes through boot camp
00:14:34.480 --> 00:14:37.159
and his drill instructor literally calls him
00:14:37.159 --> 00:14:41.039
a hell of a good Marine. He excels so thoroughly
00:14:41.039 --> 00:14:43.740
that the Marine Corps selects him for officer
00:14:43.740 --> 00:14:46.600
candidate school at Quantico and he graduates
00:14:46.600 --> 00:14:48.860
as a second lieutenant. He earned the uniform
00:14:48.860 --> 00:14:52.179
through sweat, not celebrity. But even then,
00:14:52.320 --> 00:14:53.940
the uniform wasn't enough to shield him from
00:14:53.940 --> 00:14:56.919
his past, was it? No, because his name tag still
00:14:56.919 --> 00:14:59.659
read Sterling Hayden. Everywhere he went, he
00:14:59.659 --> 00:15:01.759
was still perceived as the movie star playing
00:15:01.759 --> 00:15:05.279
dress up. So he decides he has to kill off Sterling
00:15:05.279 --> 00:15:08.340
Hayden. In 1943, he legally changes his name
00:15:08.340 --> 00:15:11.549
to John Hamilton. Just completely sheds the Hollywood
00:15:11.549 --> 00:15:14.769
skin. Yes. And he requests a transfer back to
00:15:14.769 --> 00:15:17.950
the OSS. He doesn't want glamorous frontline
00:15:17.950 --> 00:15:20.129
infantry charges where photographers might snap
00:15:20.129 --> 00:15:23.250
a picture. He wants the gritty, unglamorous work
00:15:23.250 --> 00:15:26.750
in the shadows. And the OSS recognizes that while
00:15:26.750 --> 00:15:29.149
he might be a relatively new Marine officer,
00:15:29.509 --> 00:15:32.190
he is an elite world class sailor. Right. They
00:15:32.190 --> 00:15:34.509
know his background on the water. So they deploy
00:15:34.509 --> 00:15:37.330
him to Bari, Italy. and then down to the Port
00:15:37.330 --> 00:15:40.230
of Monopoly to run maritime supply lines for
00:15:40.230 --> 00:15:42.830
the partisan resistance in Yugoslavia. And the
00:15:42.830 --> 00:15:45.210
sheer scale of the command they give Lieutenant
00:15:45.210 --> 00:15:48.490
John Hamilton is staggering. He is placed in
00:15:48.490 --> 00:15:51.629
charge of 400 Yugoslav partisans, which included
00:15:51.629 --> 00:15:54.610
50 female fighters, by the way, and a massive
00:15:54.610 --> 00:15:56.850
motley fleet of boats. What kind of fleet are
00:15:56.850 --> 00:15:59.710
we talking about here? He has 14 schooners, six
00:15:59.710 --> 00:16:02.350
catches, and two brigantines. These aren't steel
00:16:02.350 --> 00:16:04.250
warships. These are all wooden sailing vessels.
00:16:04.509 --> 00:16:06.649
And their primary mission is to smuggle heavy
00:16:06.649 --> 00:16:09.289
weapons and high explosives across the Adriatic
00:16:09.289 --> 00:16:11.450
Sea. Now, before we delve into the mechanics
00:16:11.450 --> 00:16:14.129
of those supply runs, we really should clarify
00:16:14.129 --> 00:16:16.429
the landscape in Yugoslavia at the time. Yes.
00:16:16.519 --> 00:16:19.519
is very important. Because it was a highly fractured
00:16:19.519 --> 00:16:22.379
environment. You had Tito's communist partisans
00:16:22.379 --> 00:16:25.379
fighting on one side and the royalist Chetniks
00:16:25.379 --> 00:16:27.799
led by General Mihailovich on the other. Right.
00:16:28.279 --> 00:16:30.759
And we need to be explicitly clear to the listener
00:16:30.759 --> 00:16:33.919
here. We are not taking sides or endorsing any
00:16:33.919 --> 00:16:36.740
political ideology whatsoever. We are strictly
00:16:36.740 --> 00:16:39.720
looking at the source text and analyzing this
00:16:39.720 --> 00:16:42.940
through a tactical lens. Absolutely. The historical
00:16:42.940 --> 00:16:45.299
record indicates Hayden wasn't making some grand
00:16:45.299 --> 00:16:47.440
political statement when he aligned with Tito's
00:16:47.440 --> 00:16:50.360
forces. His choice was purely pragmatic. How
00:16:50.360 --> 00:16:53.340
so? Tito's partisans were actively and aggressively
00:16:53.340 --> 00:16:55.740
fighting the Axis invaders right then and there.
00:16:56.420 --> 00:16:59.460
Mihielish, conversely, was employing a long -term
00:16:59.460 --> 00:17:02.259
strategy of stockpiling allied weapons. It was
00:17:02.259 --> 00:17:04.579
biding his time. Right, waiting for a decisive
00:17:04.579 --> 00:17:07.460
moment to strike in order to avoid heavy casualties
00:17:07.460 --> 00:17:10.200
and preserve the pre -war monarchy. And Hayden,
00:17:10.420 --> 00:17:13.480
being a man who valued immediate visceral action,
00:17:13.819 --> 00:17:15.599
was just naturally drawn to the faction that
00:17:15.599 --> 00:17:17.519
was already shooting at the enemy. It wasn't
00:17:17.519 --> 00:17:20.420
about communism versus royalism for him. It was
00:17:20.420 --> 00:17:23.359
about who was fighting the Germans today. Exactly.
00:17:23.539 --> 00:17:26.220
And the logistics of how they fought are mind
00:17:26.220 --> 00:17:29.039
-boggling. I really want you to picture the reality
00:17:29.039 --> 00:17:32.559
of this. You are John Hamilton. You are standing
00:17:32.559 --> 00:17:35.019
on the deck of a wooden schooner packed to the
00:17:35.019 --> 00:17:37.339
brim with thousands of pounds of high explosives.
00:17:37.460 --> 00:17:40.319
Sounds terrifying. You have zero armor. You have
00:17:40.319 --> 00:17:43.519
no heavy guns and you have to sail this floating
00:17:43.519 --> 00:17:47.279
bomb through a literal allied minefield in the
00:17:47.279 --> 00:17:50.099
late afternoon just to have a chance of reaching
00:17:50.099 --> 00:17:53.140
the Yugoslavian island of Vis by dawn. And the
00:17:53.140 --> 00:17:54.980
timing there is absolutely critical because the
00:17:54.980 --> 00:17:57.480
moment the sun comes up the German Luftwaffe
00:17:57.480 --> 00:17:59.619
patrols will be scanning the coastline. And a
00:17:59.619 --> 00:18:01.839
100 -foot schooner isn't exactly subtle. Not
00:18:01.839 --> 00:18:03.940
at all. So how do you hide a fleet of wooden
00:18:03.940 --> 00:18:06.359
ships from airplanes? You back them into these
00:18:06.359 --> 00:18:09.160
precipitous razor -thin hidden coves along the
00:18:09.160 --> 00:18:12.660
coast. Then Hamilton and his partisans would
00:18:12.660 --> 00:18:15.799
chop down massive pine boughs and physically
00:18:15.799 --> 00:18:18.480
weave them through the ships rigging. Just camouflaging
00:18:18.480 --> 00:18:21.059
an entire ship with trees. Yeah, they festooned
00:18:21.059 --> 00:18:23.740
the masts with foliage to blend the vessels into
00:18:23.740 --> 00:18:26.079
the tree line. Then they'd unload the weapons
00:18:26.079 --> 00:18:28.759
under the cover of darkness, re -camouflage the
00:18:28.759 --> 00:18:31.410
ships, and try to slip back to Italy. The sheer
00:18:31.410 --> 00:18:34.130
mechanical terror of navigating a minefield in
00:18:34.130 --> 00:18:37.549
the dark on a wooden boat packed with ammo, trip
00:18:37.549 --> 00:18:40.089
after trip. Right, I have to ask, what kind of
00:18:40.089 --> 00:18:42.690
drive does that take? It is the ultimate antidote
00:18:42.690 --> 00:18:45.690
to the safety of a Hollywood soundstage. It requires
00:18:45.690 --> 00:18:48.660
a level of absolute unblanking commitment to
00:18:48.660 --> 00:18:50.619
the present moment. There are no retakes out
00:18:50.619 --> 00:18:52.920
there. Exactly. If you miss a cue on a movie
00:18:52.920 --> 00:18:55.039
set, a director yells cut and you do another
00:18:55.039 --> 00:18:58.079
take. If you miss a cue in a minefield, you and
00:18:58.079 --> 00:19:00.980
your entire crew are vaporized. And he didn't
00:19:00.980 --> 00:19:04.259
just stay on the boats either. In 1944, he actually
00:19:04.259 --> 00:19:07.000
parachuted into Yugoslavia. He finally got to
00:19:07.000 --> 00:19:10.160
use that SOE training. He did. He organized the
00:19:10.160 --> 00:19:13.339
rescue of 26 downed American airmen, which included
00:19:13.339 --> 00:19:15.720
11 nurses who had been forced down in German
00:19:15.720 --> 00:19:18.829
-held Albania. he led them through hostile territory
00:19:18.829 --> 00:19:21.450
to safety and earned a Silver Star for gallantry.
00:19:21.650 --> 00:19:24.509
He really became a genuine, undeniable war hero.
00:19:24.769 --> 00:19:28.230
He did. John Hamilton was the real deal. He achieved
00:19:28.230 --> 00:19:30.750
the exact reality he had been searching for.
00:19:31.430 --> 00:19:34.690
But here's the tragic twist of his life. Yeah,
00:19:34.769 --> 00:19:37.269
this part is tough. The very experiences that
00:19:37.269 --> 00:19:39.430
finally gave him a sense of profound purpose.
00:19:39.880 --> 00:19:42.839
his search for authenticity, and his deep admiration
00:19:42.839 --> 00:19:45.539
for the grit of those partisans that would all
00:19:45.539 --> 00:19:47.559
be weaponized against him the moment the war
00:19:47.559 --> 00:19:50.579
ended. So the war ends, the Cold War begins,
00:19:50.759 --> 00:19:53.920
and the world just shifts dramatically. Hayden
00:19:53.920 --> 00:19:57.000
returns to the United States. He and Madeleine
00:19:57.000 --> 00:19:59.039
Carroll realize their marriage was built on the
00:19:59.039 --> 00:20:02.049
intensity of the war. and they divorce amicably.
00:20:02.329 --> 00:20:04.609
And he reluctantly goes back to Hollywood. Back
00:20:04.609 --> 00:20:06.950
to the makeup chair, taking on those legendary
00:20:06.950 --> 00:20:09.869
roles just to pay the bills. But he is a changed
00:20:09.869 --> 00:20:13.509
man. Very much so. In 1946, still deeply moved
00:20:13.509 --> 00:20:15.950
by the egalitarian toughness of the Yugoslav
00:20:15.950 --> 00:20:18.509
partisans he fought alongside, he actually joins
00:20:18.509 --> 00:20:20.750
the American Communist Party. We really need
00:20:20.750 --> 00:20:22.710
to contextualize this membership, though. It
00:20:22.710 --> 00:20:25.150
was incredibly brief, exactly six months. Just
00:20:25.150 --> 00:20:27.970
a blip. He attended a handful of meetings, found
00:20:27.970 --> 00:20:30.609
that he completely detested the rigid dogma and
00:20:30.609 --> 00:20:33.450
the political rhetoric. And he just walked away.
00:20:34.009 --> 00:20:36.769
It was a temporary exploration fueled by his
00:20:36.769 --> 00:20:40.009
wartime nostalgia, not some lifelong ideological
00:20:40.009 --> 00:20:41.869
commitment. But in the paranoid climate of the
00:20:41.869 --> 00:20:44.509
late 1940s, six months was a death sentence for
00:20:44.509 --> 00:20:47.309
a career. Oh, absolutely. The Red Scare is suffocating
00:20:47.309 --> 00:20:50.289
the country. J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI flag
00:20:50.289 --> 00:20:53.450
that brief membership. And soon enough, Sterling
00:20:53.450 --> 00:20:55.910
Hayden is hauled before the House Un -American
00:20:55.910 --> 00:20:58.950
Activities Committee, UAC. and the environment
00:20:58.950 --> 00:21:01.910
of those hearings was meticulously designed to
00:21:01.910 --> 00:21:04.470
break people. How so? You are sitting in a cramped
00:21:04.470 --> 00:21:07.630
room, flash bulbs exploding in your face, surrounded
00:21:07.630 --> 00:21:11.269
by powerful men in suits asking loaded trap questions.
00:21:11.769 --> 00:21:13.730
They are just threatening his acting career either.
00:21:13.849 --> 00:21:15.710
Right. They are threatening him with federal
00:21:15.710 --> 00:21:18.470
prison time and the loss of custody of his children.
00:21:18.670 --> 00:21:20.769
But how does a guy like that break? How does
00:21:20.769 --> 00:21:23.309
a commando who willingly sailed high explosives
00:21:23.309 --> 00:21:25.990
past German blockades, a man who jumped out of
00:21:25.990 --> 00:21:28.410
planes into enemy territory, just fold under
00:21:28.410 --> 00:21:31.720
the pressure of a few politicians in suits? Because
00:21:31.720 --> 00:21:34.779
he did fold. He cooperated entirely. He gave
00:21:34.779 --> 00:21:37.160
them the names of his peers in Hollywood who
00:21:37.160 --> 00:21:39.279
had attended those meetings. If we connect this
00:21:39.279 --> 00:21:41.799
to the bigger picture, it really requires us
00:21:41.799 --> 00:21:44.240
to understand how different types of pressure
00:21:44.240 --> 00:21:47.319
affect the human mind. What do you mean? Think
00:21:47.319 --> 00:21:49.200
of it like the structural integrity of a submarine.
00:21:50.099 --> 00:21:52.640
A submarine is engineered to withstand the crushing,
00:21:52.980 --> 00:21:55.079
violent physical pressure of the deep ocean.
00:21:55.420 --> 00:21:58.619
It can survive depth charges. But if you expose
00:21:58.619 --> 00:22:01.619
that exact same submarine to a slow, creeping,
00:22:01.740 --> 00:22:05.039
chemical corrosion, the hull rots away and it
00:22:05.039 --> 00:22:06.960
completely falls apart. That is a great way of
00:22:06.960 --> 00:22:09.200
putting it. The physical courage he mastered
00:22:09.200 --> 00:22:11.720
in the Adriatic Sea just didn't translate to
00:22:11.720 --> 00:22:13.660
the psychological warfare of a congressional
00:22:13.660 --> 00:22:16.720
hearing. Precisely. John Hamilton, the operative,
00:22:17.339 --> 00:22:19.180
thrived against a physical enemy he could see
00:22:19.180 --> 00:22:22.549
and fight. But Sterling Hayden, the actor, was
00:22:22.549 --> 00:22:25.369
outmaneuvered by a murky, manipulative theater
00:22:25.369 --> 00:22:27.329
of political performance. He didn't know how
00:22:27.329 --> 00:22:29.769
to fight in a suit. Right. He was terrified of
00:22:29.769 --> 00:22:32.690
losing his family, yes, but he was also completely
00:22:32.690 --> 00:22:35.250
disoriented by a battlefield that relied entirely
00:22:35.250 --> 00:22:38.529
on smoke and mirrors. And the betrayal just shattered
00:22:38.529 --> 00:22:40.970
his own sense of self. He wrote about it years
00:22:40.970 --> 00:22:43.869
later in his autobiography, and the raw guilt
00:22:43.869 --> 00:22:46.589
is staggering to read. What did he write? He
00:22:46.589 --> 00:22:48.710
said, I don't think you have the foggiest notion
00:22:48.710 --> 00:22:51.190
of the contempt I have had for myself since the
00:22:51.190 --> 00:22:54.990
day I did that thing. Wow. It painted him forever.
00:22:55.509 --> 00:22:57.690
He spent years proving he wasn't a Hollywood
00:22:57.690 --> 00:22:59.930
fraud, only to realize he had played the role
00:22:59.930 --> 00:23:02.549
of the coward when it mattered most in peacetime.
00:23:02.670 --> 00:23:05.890
So what does this all mean for you as the listener?
00:23:06.029 --> 00:23:08.869
How do you reconcile a life with such jagged
00:23:08.869 --> 00:23:11.549
edges? You risk everything to save strangers
00:23:11.549 --> 00:23:13.609
in one chapter of your life, and then you fail
00:23:13.609 --> 00:23:15.970
your own moral code to save yourself in the next.
00:23:16.170 --> 00:23:18.890
It forces us to confront the uncomfortable reality
00:23:18.890 --> 00:23:21.329
that courage is not a permanent state of being.
00:23:21.710 --> 00:23:23.809
It is highly situational. Yeah, you can't just
00:23:23.809 --> 00:23:26.730
bank it. No. The bravery required to charge a
00:23:26.730 --> 00:23:28.670
machine gun nest is fundamentally different from
00:23:28.670 --> 00:23:30.630
the moral fortitude required to face down your
00:23:30.630 --> 00:23:33.079
own government and protect your community. Hayden
00:23:33.079 --> 00:23:36.160
was a master of physical reality, but the abstract
00:23:36.160 --> 00:23:39.279
ideological warfare of the 1950s defeated him
00:23:39.279 --> 00:23:41.619
completely. Through all of this, he maintained
00:23:41.619 --> 00:23:44.460
he was never really an actor. He insisted to
00:23:44.460 --> 00:23:47.039
his dying day that he was just a sailor and a
00:23:47.039 --> 00:23:49.000
writer who only stepped in front of a camera
00:23:49.000 --> 00:23:51.579
to finance his boats. Though his filmography
00:23:51.579 --> 00:23:53.720
says otherwise. Right. Despite his protests,
00:23:53.839 --> 00:23:56.799
he is immoralized as a cinema icon. His personal
00:23:56.799 --> 00:23:59.619
life was a mess. Three marriages, constant financial
00:23:59.619 --> 00:24:02.500
trouble. But he lived an utterly unmatched life
00:24:02.500 --> 00:24:05.359
of adventure before he passed away from cancer
00:24:05.359 --> 00:24:10.839
in 1986. He truly packed multiple wildly contradictory
00:24:10.839 --> 00:24:14.299
lifetimes into 70 years. He really did. And that
00:24:14.299 --> 00:24:16.259
brings us to the end of our deep dive today.
00:24:16.440 --> 00:24:18.299
But before you go, I want to leave you with a
00:24:18.299 --> 00:24:20.480
final thought to mull over on your own. Let's
00:24:20.480 --> 00:24:22.700
hear it. Hayden spent his entire life running
00:24:22.700 --> 00:24:25.079
away from the make -believe of Hollywood. He
00:24:25.079 --> 00:24:27.119
was desperate to find something solid, something
00:24:27.119 --> 00:24:30.259
real. But consider his path. It is a path defined
00:24:30.259 --> 00:24:33.380
by constant reinvention. Exactly. He was the
00:24:33.380 --> 00:24:35.720
troubled kid fleeing a fake rich family, the
00:24:35.720 --> 00:24:37.779
Hollywood idol, the British commando in training,
00:24:37.940 --> 00:24:40.339
the Marine private, the officer, John Hamilton,
00:24:40.380 --> 00:24:43.660
the spy, and finally the informant. Was he actually
00:24:43.660 --> 00:24:46.339
confronting reality by taking on all these lives
00:24:46.339 --> 00:24:49.599
or by constantly throwing away one mask to immediately
00:24:49.599 --> 00:24:51.960
put on another? Was he just endlessly casting
00:24:51.960 --> 00:24:54.460
himself a new role so he never had to face the
00:24:54.460 --> 00:24:56.599
real Sterling Hayden? The man who hated acting
00:24:56.599 --> 00:24:59.480
turned the entire world into his stage. A stage
00:24:59.480 --> 00:25:01.859
where the stakes were life and death. Thank you
00:25:01.859 --> 00:25:04.420
for joining us on this deep dive. Stay curious
00:25:04.420 --> 00:25:07.720
and always question the facade. And I want to
00:25:07.720 --> 00:25:09.740
thank everybody for listening to Veterans Radio
00:25:09.740 --> 00:25:13.160
today. I am Jim Fossone. It's been a pleasure
00:25:13.160 --> 00:25:15.779
to be your host. I'm a Veterans Disability Lawyer
00:25:15.779 --> 00:25:18.539
at Legal Help for Veterans and you can reach
00:25:18.539 --> 00:25:24.519
us at 800 -693 -4800 or legalhelpforveterans
00:25:24.519 --> 00:25:27.730
.com on the web. You can follow Veterans Radio
00:25:27.730 --> 00:25:31.009
on Facebook and listen to its podcasts and internet
00:25:31.009 --> 00:25:35.630
radio shows by visiting us at veteransradio .org.
00:25:35.750 --> 00:25:39.130
That's veteransradio .org. We would again want
00:25:39.130 --> 00:25:42.130
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It can be reached at legalhelpforveterans .com
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Thank you.
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All across America and around the world, this
00:00:09.019 --> 00:00:15.140
is Veterans Radio. This is Veterans Radio. Good
00:00:15.140 --> 00:00:18.719
day. I'm Jim Fosson. I'm the Officer of the Deck
00:00:18.719 --> 00:00:21.179
today here on Veterans Radio and thanks for joining
00:00:21.179 --> 00:00:23.879
us. We've got some interesting stories for you.
00:00:24.059 --> 00:00:26.179
We always want to remind you, you can find more
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about Veterans Radio at its Facebook site or
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at the web, veteransradio .org. Where we're on
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the web 24 -7, you can find a lot of our podcasts
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there as well. We post new ones every Tuesday,
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so you can get a new story, a new interview,
00:00:43.859 --> 00:00:46.820
something you didn't know before by going to
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veteransradio .org. And before we get started,
00:00:49.719 --> 00:00:53.869
we want to thank our sponsors. First up, We want
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to thank Legal Help for Veterans. Legal Help
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for Veterans fights for veterans disability rights
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all across the nation. You can reach them at
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800 -693 -4800 or on the web at legalhelpforveterans
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.com. We just want to remind you that veterans
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radio podcasts are available on all your favorite
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streaming platforms including RSS .com, Apple
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Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts, iHeartRadio,
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and Reeze Across America Radio. So wherever you
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are, you can find us, whether it's on your mobile
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phone or your computer or your laptop or your
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tablet, but listen in to Veterans Radio Podcasts.
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We post something new every week and you're going
00:01:46.340 --> 00:01:50.780
to find it informative. The content for this
00:01:50.780 --> 00:01:54.700
interview is coming from our friends C Douglas
00:01:54.700 --> 00:01:59.280
sterner and his buddies who write Beyond belief
00:01:59.280 --> 00:02:04.159
books stories about American heroes quite frankly
00:02:04.159 --> 00:02:07.959
Untold stories oftentimes and stories that maybe
00:02:07.959 --> 00:02:10.639
have been forgotten. So we're bringing those
00:02:10.639 --> 00:02:13.960
forward to you. Here's one That's got a little
00:02:13.960 --> 00:02:19.500
aspect of Hollywood spycraft all kinds of interesting
00:02:19.500 --> 00:02:22.300
things that I think you're gonna find interesting.
00:02:28.240 --> 00:02:30.159
Imagine for a second that you are holding this
00:02:30.159 --> 00:02:33.319
massive just incredibly lucrative Hollywood contract.
00:02:33.419 --> 00:02:35.840
Okay. You are officially crowned the most beautiful
00:02:35.840 --> 00:02:39.500
man in the movies. It is the early 1940s and
00:02:39.500 --> 00:02:43.199
you basically have everything society insists
00:02:43.199 --> 00:02:47.900
you should want, right? Like money, fame, Adulation.
00:02:48.180 --> 00:02:50.020
The absolute dream for most people, yeah. Exactly.
00:02:50.120 --> 00:02:51.599
And then you just throw it all in the trash.
00:02:51.680 --> 00:02:53.639
You walk away from every bit of it to jump out
00:02:53.639 --> 00:02:56.199
of a bomber behind enemy lines. I mean, it sounds
00:02:56.199 --> 00:02:58.580
less like a biography and more like a rejected
00:02:58.580 --> 00:03:01.400
script for some spy thriller. It really does.
00:03:01.500 --> 00:03:04.120
Because it just defies human nature. We are so
00:03:04.120 --> 00:03:07.020
wired to seek security. When someone achieves
00:03:07.020 --> 00:03:09.000
the absolute pinnacle of financial and social
00:03:09.000 --> 00:03:12.419
security, they don't typically volunteer for
00:03:12.419 --> 00:03:15.460
a suicide mission in a Yugoslavian combat zone.
00:03:15.560 --> 00:03:17.580
But that is exactly what happened. Today, we
00:03:17.580 --> 00:03:19.780
are doing a deep dive into the life of Sterling
00:03:19.780 --> 00:03:21.919
Hayden. And if you are a film buff, you almost
00:03:21.919 --> 00:03:24.319
certainly know his face. Oh, definitely. He was
00:03:24.319 --> 00:03:26.919
the corrupt Captain McCluskey in The Godfather
00:03:26.919 --> 00:03:31.219
and the utterly unhinged General Jack D. Ripper
00:03:31.219 --> 00:03:33.960
in Dr. Strangelove. Such iconic roles. Right.
00:03:34.400 --> 00:03:37.039
But beneath that incredibly recognizable Hollywood
00:03:37.039 --> 00:03:40.840
facade was a hidden just astonishing reality.
00:03:41.500 --> 00:03:44.719
He was a United States Marine, an OSS operative,
00:03:45.139 --> 00:03:47.780
and a man who went by the fake name John Hamilton.
00:03:48.240 --> 00:03:50.240
And really the tension between the man on the
00:03:50.240 --> 00:03:52.860
screen and the man in the shadows is the entire
00:03:52.860 --> 00:03:56.500
core of his story. We are looking at a life defined
00:03:56.500 --> 00:03:59.620
by violent extremes. It's this relentless tug
00:03:59.620 --> 00:04:02.699
of war between profound authenticity and, you
00:04:02.699 --> 00:04:04.840
know, total artifice. And that is our mission
00:04:04.840 --> 00:04:07.520
for you on this deep dive. We are exploring the
00:04:07.520 --> 00:04:10.580
wild paradoxical life of a man who was just desperate
00:04:10.580 --> 00:04:13.139
to escape the make believe of Hollywood for the
00:04:13.139 --> 00:04:15.699
brutal grit of reality. You'll really examine
00:04:15.699 --> 00:04:17.600
what his journey teaches you about the search
00:04:17.600 --> 00:04:20.339
for genuine purpose in a world that is just so
00:04:20.339 --> 00:04:22.379
often built on illusions. Welcome to the deep
00:04:22.379 --> 00:04:24.910
dive. So to understand why a man would throw
00:04:24.910 --> 00:04:27.629
away a literal Hollywood empire, we really have
00:04:27.629 --> 00:04:29.689
to look at the chaotic foundation of his childhood.
00:04:29.689 --> 00:04:32.110
Oh, absolutely. Hayden wasn't born into stability
00:04:32.110 --> 00:04:35.089
at all. His early life practically inoculated
00:04:35.089 --> 00:04:37.009
him against trusting anything that looked like
00:04:37.009 --> 00:04:39.889
traditional success. OK, let's unpack this. Because
00:04:39.889 --> 00:04:42.310
his childhood in New Jersey was legitimately
00:04:42.310 --> 00:04:45.069
turbulent. To put it mildly. Right. So he was
00:04:45.069 --> 00:04:49.769
born Sterling Relia Walter in 1916. And the sources
00:04:49.769 --> 00:04:52.569
recount this incredibly dark foundational moment
00:04:52.569 --> 00:04:55.870
when he was a kid. Get this. Young Sterling shoots
00:04:55.870 --> 00:04:58.589
a slingshot at a neighbor's wife. Just, you know,
00:04:58.850 --> 00:05:01.139
standard badly behaved kid stuff, but... The
00:05:01.139 --> 00:05:04.439
reaction is beyond extreme. His father is so
00:05:04.439 --> 00:05:07.000
furious that he beats the boy with a wet stick.
00:05:07.759 --> 00:05:10.220
Sterling is screaming and the father is so overwhelmed
00:05:10.220 --> 00:05:12.439
by the rage and the stress of the moment that
00:05:12.439 --> 00:05:14.920
he actually collapses from a stroke right there
00:05:14.920 --> 00:05:17.480
on the spot. It is just a staggering thing to
00:05:17.480 --> 00:05:19.639
happen to a family. Yeah, he never recovers and
00:05:19.639 --> 00:05:21.879
dies a few months later. And Hayden is just nine
00:05:21.879 --> 00:05:23.879
years old when this happens. And that kind of
00:05:23.879 --> 00:05:26.800
sudden catastrophic loss. I mean, it completely
00:05:26.800 --> 00:05:29.279
shatters a child's perception of safety. and
00:05:29.279 --> 00:05:32.079
then the environment only becomes more unpredictable.
00:05:32.319 --> 00:05:34.420
Right, because his mother remarries. Exactly.
00:05:34.720 --> 00:05:36.699
She marries a man named James Watson Hayden,
00:05:36.839 --> 00:05:38.519
which is where we get the name Sterling Walter
00:05:38.519 --> 00:05:40.639
Hayden. But this stepfather, they called him
00:05:40.639 --> 00:05:43.519
Daddy Jim, he is the archetypal serial failure.
00:05:43.689 --> 00:05:45.829
He was always chasing the big score that just
00:05:45.829 --> 00:05:47.930
never materialized. Right. The classic grifter
00:05:47.930 --> 00:05:50.250
mentality. Yeah. The family would literally check
00:05:50.250 --> 00:05:52.670
into these opulent high end hotels that they
00:05:52.670 --> 00:05:55.069
had absolutely no way of paying for. It's so
00:05:55.069 --> 00:05:58.350
brazen. I know. And then in the dead of night,
00:05:58.629 --> 00:06:00.589
young Sterling and his mother would have to sneak
00:06:00.589 --> 00:06:03.069
out down the fire escapes and just skip the bill.
00:06:03.329 --> 00:06:06.449
So he is living this completely transient life.
00:06:06.569 --> 00:06:09.110
They are drifting up and down the East Coast,
00:06:09.550 --> 00:06:11.389
constantly running from the reality of their
00:06:11.389 --> 00:06:14.420
poverty. all while pretending to be wealthy.
00:06:14.579 --> 00:06:16.660
And think about the psychological impact of that
00:06:16.660 --> 00:06:19.480
on a kid. You have a child growing up in an environment
00:06:19.480 --> 00:06:23.000
where the adults project wealth but possess literally
00:06:23.000 --> 00:06:26.120
nothing. Yeah, the rules of success, the authority
00:06:26.120 --> 00:06:28.639
figures around him. It all feels completely arbitrary.
00:06:28.819 --> 00:06:31.199
It feels fake. Totally. So it makes perfect sense
00:06:31.199 --> 00:06:32.980
that he would reject traditional structures.
00:06:33.180 --> 00:06:35.180
He despised school, flunked the third grade,
00:06:35.240 --> 00:06:37.300
and eventually just dropped out altogether in
00:06:37.300 --> 00:06:39.769
the 10th grade. He needed something solid. He
00:06:39.769 --> 00:06:42.870
was starving for reality. And by age 16, he just
00:06:42.870 --> 00:06:45.290
runs away to the Portland Ox. And he actually
00:06:45.290 --> 00:06:48.350
finds his first real home on the sea. Yeah. He
00:06:48.350 --> 00:06:50.629
signs on as a ship's boy on a schooner called
00:06:50.629 --> 00:06:53.589
the Puritan, making a whopping $10 a month. Id
00:06:53.589 --> 00:06:57.129
bunny. Right. But the thing is, he is an absolute
00:06:57.129 --> 00:07:00.329
prodigy at this. By 1936, he is sailing around
00:07:00.329 --> 00:07:02.750
the entire world on a ship called the Yankee.
00:07:02.910 --> 00:07:05.329
Because the ocean offered the exact opposite
00:07:05.329 --> 00:07:08.350
of a stepfather's life, right? On land, life
00:07:08.350 --> 00:07:10.810
was unpredictable and full of empty promises.
00:07:10.990 --> 00:07:13.490
But out on the ocean, cause and effect are absolute.
00:07:13.769 --> 00:07:15.829
There is no bluffing a storm. No, you can't talk
00:07:15.829 --> 00:07:17.910
your way out of a hurricane. Exactly. If you
00:07:17.910 --> 00:07:21.089
don't tie a knot correctly, the sail tears. If
00:07:21.089 --> 00:07:23.230
you don't read the weather, you sink. It is this
00:07:23.230 --> 00:07:26.110
pure, unforgiving meritocracy. There is this
00:07:26.110 --> 00:07:28.569
incredible detail from the sources that highlights
00:07:28.569 --> 00:07:31.850
this perfectly. It is 1938, and he is caught
00:07:31.850 --> 00:07:35.110
in a howling gale during a maritime race. Oh,
00:07:35.250 --> 00:07:37.829
this story's wild. The wind is deafening, the
00:07:37.829 --> 00:07:40.769
deck is pitching wildly, and he physically crawls
00:07:40.769 --> 00:07:43.550
out along a spar -like, suspended directly over
00:07:43.550 --> 00:07:46.350
the churning ocean to secure a torn mane gaff.
00:07:46.569 --> 00:07:49.209
The sheer mechanical reality of that moment.
00:07:49.329 --> 00:07:51.389
You just can't fake your way through a gale.
00:07:51.829 --> 00:07:55.189
You really can't. But the bitter irony here is
00:07:55.189 --> 00:07:58.509
that this very ruggedness, this undeniable reality
00:07:58.509 --> 00:08:01.449
is what yanks him right back into a world of
00:08:01.449 --> 00:08:04.250
total artificiality. Because a newspaper photographer
00:08:04.250 --> 00:08:07.069
happens to capture an image of him at a race.
00:08:07.129 --> 00:08:10.889
Right. And he is this handsome six foot four
00:08:10.889 --> 00:08:14.300
blonde rugged sailor. The paper runs the photo
00:08:14.300 --> 00:08:17.300
and the caption reads, sailor like movie idol.
00:08:17.759 --> 00:08:20.000
And boom, the studio executives at Paramount
00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:22.379
Pictures see it and immediately offer him a contract
00:08:22.379 --> 00:08:26.019
for $250 a week. Which was just staggering money
00:08:26.019 --> 00:08:28.629
back then. Especially for a guy making 10 bucks
00:08:28.629 --> 00:08:30.649
a month a few years prior. Okay, I have to look
00:08:30.649 --> 00:08:32.750
at this through an analogy because it is so strange.
00:08:32.909 --> 00:08:35.350
It is like someone taking a ridiculously high
00:08:35.350 --> 00:08:38.830
-paying corporate temp job strictly to fund their
00:08:38.830 --> 00:08:40.730
weekend hobby. That's a great way to put it.
00:08:40.769 --> 00:08:42.529
He wasn't starry -eyed about the silver screen
00:08:42.529 --> 00:08:45.710
at all. He explicitly told people his only plan
00:08:45.710 --> 00:08:47.970
was to endure Hollywood just long enough to make
00:08:47.970 --> 00:08:51.230
$5 ,000, buy his own schooner and get right back
00:08:51.230 --> 00:08:53.929
on the water. We can really see a distinct pattern
00:08:53.929 --> 00:08:57.320
solidifying here. Notice how Hayden thrived under
00:08:57.320 --> 00:08:59.320
the undeniable laws of the ocean because they
00:08:59.320 --> 00:09:02.740
were real. Yeah. But he chafed violently against
00:09:02.740 --> 00:09:05.539
arbitrary control. He rejected the authority
00:09:05.539 --> 00:09:08.720
of school teachers and he immediately detested
00:09:08.720 --> 00:09:11.000
the authority of studio executives who tried
00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:14.080
to micromanage how he stood or how he smiled
00:09:14.080 --> 00:09:16.679
or how he spoke. The sea demanded authenticity,
00:09:16.960 --> 00:09:19.559
but Hollywood basically just demanded a mask.
00:09:19.769 --> 00:09:22.649
And that mask started to feel incredibly suffocating,
00:09:22.929 --> 00:09:24.590
especially as the rest of the world was quite
00:09:24.590 --> 00:09:27.210
literally catching fire. Right, because it's
00:09:27.210 --> 00:09:31.490
1941. World War II is ravaging Europe, and Hayden
00:09:31.490 --> 00:09:33.909
is standing on a soundstage in California wearing
00:09:33.909 --> 00:09:36.710
makeup. It had to feel absurd to him. He is shooting
00:09:36.710 --> 00:09:39.190
his very first film, which is a movie called
00:09:39.190 --> 00:09:42.210
Virginia. And that set is where a major pivot
00:09:42.210 --> 00:09:44.870
happens for him. He meets his co -star, Madeline
00:09:44.870 --> 00:09:47.049
Carroll. She is fascinating in her own right.
00:09:47.110 --> 00:09:49.669
Oh, absolutely. She was 10 years older, English
00:09:49.669 --> 00:09:52.649
-born, and she really shared his deep disdain
00:09:52.649 --> 00:09:55.330
for the shallowness of the movie business, especially
00:09:55.330 --> 00:09:58.070
with a global war raging. And her connection
00:09:58.070 --> 00:10:01.889
to the war was very visceral. Her own sister
00:10:01.889 --> 00:10:04.590
had actually been killed by German bombing in
00:10:04.590 --> 00:10:06.490
the London Blitz. So she wasn't just detached
00:10:06.490 --> 00:10:08.879
from it. Not at all. She had actually turned
00:10:08.879 --> 00:10:11.539
her personal French chateau into an orphanage
00:10:11.539 --> 00:10:14.019
for displaced children. She wasn't just talking
00:10:14.019 --> 00:10:16.279
about the war at Hollywood dinner parties. She
00:10:16.279 --> 00:10:19.779
was actively trying to heal the wounds it caused.
00:10:20.200 --> 00:10:22.519
Carol really represented the kind of tangible
00:10:22.519 --> 00:10:26.549
real world impact Hayden was starving for. Catalyzed
00:10:26.549 --> 00:10:29.090
by her influence and his own deep -seated restlessness,
00:10:29.629 --> 00:10:31.990
he decides to just break his contract with Paramount.
00:10:32.090 --> 00:10:34.070
Which you didn't really do back then. No, the
00:10:34.070 --> 00:10:36.529
studio system owned you. But what's surprising
00:10:36.529 --> 00:10:39.429
is that he manages to leave on good terms. How
00:10:39.429 --> 00:10:42.169
does he pull that off? The studio head, Barney
00:10:42.169 --> 00:10:45.110
Balaban, actually recognizes that Hayden's desire
00:10:45.110 --> 00:10:47.269
to do something worthwhile is totally genuine.
00:10:47.649 --> 00:10:50.269
It wasn't just some contract negotiation tactic
00:10:50.269 --> 00:10:52.769
to get more money. So the Hollywood actor pivots
00:10:52.769 --> 00:10:55.679
to aspiring soldier. And he doesn't just sign
00:10:55.679 --> 00:10:58.419
up at a local recruiting office. He manages to
00:10:58.419 --> 00:11:01.039
secure a meeting with wild Bill Donovan. Just
00:11:01.039 --> 00:11:02.960
casually meeting with one of the most important
00:11:02.960 --> 00:11:05.779
figures in intelligence. Right. And for context,
00:11:06.100 --> 00:11:08.120
Donovan is the coordinator of information at
00:11:08.120 --> 00:11:10.600
this time, and he goes on to create the OSS,
00:11:10.759 --> 00:11:13.320
the Office of Strategic Services, which is the
00:11:13.320 --> 00:11:16.539
direct precursor to the CIA. Donovan clearly
00:11:16.539 --> 00:11:18.919
sees something in this actor and sends him to
00:11:18.919 --> 00:11:22.600
Scotland to train with the British SOE. The SOE,
00:11:22.720 --> 00:11:25.580
which was the Special Operations Executive, essentially
00:11:25.580 --> 00:11:28.659
Winston Churchill's secret army tasked with conducting
00:11:28.659 --> 00:11:31.679
espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied
00:11:31.679 --> 00:11:34.159
Europe. Put yourself in Hayden's boots for a
00:11:34.159 --> 00:11:36.840
second. He is the only American in this group.
00:11:36.879 --> 00:11:40.700
Wow. He has zero military experience. and he
00:11:40.700 --> 00:11:43.720
is training alongside hardened, legal combat
00:11:43.720 --> 00:11:46.059
veterans from Poland, France, and Norway men
00:11:46.059 --> 00:11:48.419
who have literally lost their countries and whose
00:11:48.419 --> 00:11:50.879
only goal is to parachute back into Nazi -occupied
00:11:50.879 --> 00:11:52.620
territory to kill the enemy. And he just has
00:11:52.620 --> 00:11:54.559
to keep up with them. He had to learn the mechanics
00:11:54.559 --> 00:11:57.379
of silent killing, demolition, irregular warfare,
00:11:57.519 --> 00:11:59.980
and surprisingly, he earned their respect. He
00:11:59.980 --> 00:12:02.279
wasn't just a Hollywood pretty boy to them. Right.
00:12:02.490 --> 00:12:05.250
He trained grueling hours during the day and
00:12:05.250 --> 00:12:07.110
drank whiskey with them at night while listening
00:12:07.110 --> 00:12:10.070
to the BBC broadcasts. He had finally found a
00:12:10.070 --> 00:12:13.019
tribe that dealt strictly in reality. But then
00:12:13.019 --> 00:12:15.259
reality hits a little too hard. Yeah it does.
00:12:15.460 --> 00:12:18.259
Because on his tenth parachute jump during training,
00:12:18.620 --> 00:12:21.700
he lands terribly in a quarry. He breaks his
00:12:21.700 --> 00:12:24.179
ankle, he tears up his knee, and he physically
00:12:24.179 --> 00:12:27.159
displaces his backbone. Just a devastating injury.
00:12:27.240 --> 00:12:29.639
He is medically broken and sent back to the United
00:12:29.639 --> 00:12:31.940
States. And this is where his decision -making
00:12:31.940 --> 00:12:34.139
gets really confusing for me. Like I have to
00:12:34.139 --> 00:12:36.440
push back on his logic here because what he does
00:12:36.440 --> 00:12:39.899
next borders on the absurd. Let's trace the sequence
00:12:39.899 --> 00:12:42.360
of events because it is a wild ride. OK, so he
00:12:42.360 --> 00:12:44.879
gets back. The Navy approaches him. They know
00:12:44.879 --> 00:12:47.019
he is a master mariner, right? So they offer
00:12:47.019 --> 00:12:49.259
him a commission as an ensign. They tell him,
00:12:49.259 --> 00:12:51.919
hey, take a desk job while your back heals. Makes
00:12:51.919 --> 00:12:54.679
perfect sense. But Hayden is insulted by this.
00:12:54.960 --> 00:12:58.779
He demands a PT boat, a patrol torpedo boat.
00:12:58.799 --> 00:13:01.379
For those who don't know, that is a fast, heavily
00:13:01.379 --> 00:13:04.340
armed, wooden vessel used for attacking larger
00:13:04.340 --> 00:13:07.019
warships at close range. Very dangerous work.
00:13:07.519 --> 00:13:10.299
Very. And when the Navy says they can't guarantee
00:13:10.299 --> 00:13:13.539
him combat. command of a PT boat, he just rejects
00:13:13.539 --> 00:13:15.500
the commission entirely. He essentially walks
00:13:15.500 --> 00:13:18.279
away from an officer's rank and a safe desk job
00:13:18.279 --> 00:13:21.529
because it's simply isn't dangerous enough. Exactly.
00:13:22.029 --> 00:13:24.690
And wait, it gets wilder. After rejecting the
00:13:24.690 --> 00:13:28.590
Navy, he sails down to Curaçao, gets blackout
00:13:28.590 --> 00:13:31.830
drunk with submarines, and uses his newly acquired
00:13:31.830 --> 00:13:34.950
British commando skills to physically hurl a
00:13:34.950 --> 00:13:37.269
hotel manager out into the street. Oh my god.
00:13:37.289 --> 00:13:40.470
Yeah. He gets arrested. His Hollywood agent has
00:13:40.470 --> 00:13:43.100
to fly down to bail him out and then After all
00:13:43.100 --> 00:13:45.460
of that, he goes to the recruitment office and
00:13:45.460 --> 00:13:48.399
enlists in the Marine Corps as a private, the
00:13:48.399 --> 00:13:50.519
absolute lowest rank. Just starting from the
00:13:50.519 --> 00:13:52.860
very bottom. Is this just wild self -sabotage
00:13:52.860 --> 00:13:55.360
from a guy who misses the adrenaline of Scotland?
00:13:55.659 --> 00:13:58.289
What's fascinating here is that... From the outside,
00:13:58.710 --> 00:14:00.950
it absolutely looks like chaotic self -sabotage.
00:14:01.029 --> 00:14:04.169
I mean, it looks crazy. Totally. But psychologically,
00:14:04.389 --> 00:14:06.509
it is entirely consistent with his character.
00:14:06.690 --> 00:14:09.090
It was a total refusal of unearned privilege.
00:14:09.389 --> 00:14:11.870
Ah, I see. He felt that accepting a desk job
00:14:11.870 --> 00:14:13.929
as a commissioned officer, simply because he
00:14:13.929 --> 00:14:16.750
was a famous, handsome sailor, was just playing
00:14:16.750 --> 00:14:18.649
another fake Hollywood role. He didn't want to
00:14:18.649 --> 00:14:21.490
be a prop. Exactly. He suffered from massive
00:14:21.490 --> 00:14:24.350
imposter syndrome. He needed to earn his stripes
00:14:24.350 --> 00:14:26.940
in the mud. at the absolute bottom of the hierarchy
00:14:26.940 --> 00:14:29.700
to prove to himself that he wasn't a fraud. And
00:14:29.700 --> 00:14:32.039
the crazy part is he actually does it. He really
00:14:32.039 --> 00:14:34.480
does. He heals up. He goes through boot camp
00:14:34.480 --> 00:14:37.159
and his drill instructor literally calls him
00:14:37.159 --> 00:14:41.039
a hell of a good Marine. He excels so thoroughly
00:14:41.039 --> 00:14:43.740
that the Marine Corps selects him for officer
00:14:43.740 --> 00:14:46.600
candidate school at Quantico and he graduates
00:14:46.600 --> 00:14:48.860
as a second lieutenant. He earned the uniform
00:14:48.860 --> 00:14:52.179
through sweat, not celebrity. But even then,
00:14:52.320 --> 00:14:53.940
the uniform wasn't enough to shield him from
00:14:53.940 --> 00:14:56.919
his past, was it? No, because his name tag still
00:14:56.919 --> 00:14:59.659
read Sterling Hayden. Everywhere he went, he
00:14:59.659 --> 00:15:01.759
was still perceived as the movie star playing
00:15:01.759 --> 00:15:05.279
dress up. So he decides he has to kill off Sterling
00:15:05.279 --> 00:15:08.340
Hayden. In 1943, he legally changes his name
00:15:08.340 --> 00:15:11.549
to John Hamilton. Just completely sheds the Hollywood
00:15:11.549 --> 00:15:14.769
skin. Yes. And he requests a transfer back to
00:15:14.769 --> 00:15:17.950
the OSS. He doesn't want glamorous frontline
00:15:17.950 --> 00:15:20.129
infantry charges where photographers might snap
00:15:20.129 --> 00:15:23.250
a picture. He wants the gritty, unglamorous work
00:15:23.250 --> 00:15:26.750
in the shadows. And the OSS recognizes that while
00:15:26.750 --> 00:15:29.149
he might be a relatively new Marine officer,
00:15:29.509 --> 00:15:32.190
he is an elite world class sailor. Right. They
00:15:32.190 --> 00:15:34.509
know his background on the water. So they deploy
00:15:34.509 --> 00:15:37.330
him to Bari, Italy. and then down to the Port
00:15:37.330 --> 00:15:40.230
of Monopoly to run maritime supply lines for
00:15:40.230 --> 00:15:42.830
the partisan resistance in Yugoslavia. And the
00:15:42.830 --> 00:15:45.210
sheer scale of the command they give Lieutenant
00:15:45.210 --> 00:15:48.490
John Hamilton is staggering. He is placed in
00:15:48.490 --> 00:15:51.629
charge of 400 Yugoslav partisans, which included
00:15:51.629 --> 00:15:54.610
50 female fighters, by the way, and a massive
00:15:54.610 --> 00:15:56.850
motley fleet of boats. What kind of fleet are
00:15:56.850 --> 00:15:59.710
we talking about here? He has 14 schooners, six
00:15:59.710 --> 00:16:02.350
catches, and two brigantines. These aren't steel
00:16:02.350 --> 00:16:04.250
warships. These are all wooden sailing vessels.
00:16:04.509 --> 00:16:06.649
And their primary mission is to smuggle heavy
00:16:06.649 --> 00:16:09.289
weapons and high explosives across the Adriatic
00:16:09.289 --> 00:16:11.450
Sea. Now, before we delve into the mechanics
00:16:11.450 --> 00:16:14.129
of those supply runs, we really should clarify
00:16:14.129 --> 00:16:16.429
the landscape in Yugoslavia at the time. Yes.
00:16:16.519 --> 00:16:19.519
is very important. Because it was a highly fractured
00:16:19.519 --> 00:16:22.379
environment. You had Tito's communist partisans
00:16:22.379 --> 00:16:25.379
fighting on one side and the royalist Chetniks
00:16:25.379 --> 00:16:27.799
led by General Mihailovich on the other. Right.
00:16:28.279 --> 00:16:30.759
And we need to be explicitly clear to the listener
00:16:30.759 --> 00:16:33.919
here. We are not taking sides or endorsing any
00:16:33.919 --> 00:16:36.740
political ideology whatsoever. We are strictly
00:16:36.740 --> 00:16:39.720
looking at the source text and analyzing this
00:16:39.720 --> 00:16:42.940
through a tactical lens. Absolutely. The historical
00:16:42.940 --> 00:16:45.299
record indicates Hayden wasn't making some grand
00:16:45.299 --> 00:16:47.440
political statement when he aligned with Tito's
00:16:47.440 --> 00:16:50.360
forces. His choice was purely pragmatic. How
00:16:50.360 --> 00:16:53.340
so? Tito's partisans were actively and aggressively
00:16:53.340 --> 00:16:55.740
fighting the Axis invaders right then and there.
00:16:56.420 --> 00:16:59.460
Mihielish, conversely, was employing a long -term
00:16:59.460 --> 00:17:02.259
strategy of stockpiling allied weapons. It was
00:17:02.259 --> 00:17:04.579
biding his time. Right, waiting for a decisive
00:17:04.579 --> 00:17:07.460
moment to strike in order to avoid heavy casualties
00:17:07.460 --> 00:17:10.200
and preserve the pre -war monarchy. And Hayden,
00:17:10.420 --> 00:17:13.480
being a man who valued immediate visceral action,
00:17:13.819 --> 00:17:15.599
was just naturally drawn to the faction that
00:17:15.599 --> 00:17:17.519
was already shooting at the enemy. It wasn't
00:17:17.519 --> 00:17:20.420
about communism versus royalism for him. It was
00:17:20.420 --> 00:17:23.359
about who was fighting the Germans today. Exactly.
00:17:23.539 --> 00:17:26.220
And the logistics of how they fought are mind
00:17:26.220 --> 00:17:29.039
-boggling. I really want you to picture the reality
00:17:29.039 --> 00:17:32.559
of this. You are John Hamilton. You are standing
00:17:32.559 --> 00:17:35.019
on the deck of a wooden schooner packed to the
00:17:35.019 --> 00:17:37.339
brim with thousands of pounds of high explosives.
00:17:37.460 --> 00:17:40.319
Sounds terrifying. You have zero armor. You have
00:17:40.319 --> 00:17:43.519
no heavy guns and you have to sail this floating
00:17:43.519 --> 00:17:47.279
bomb through a literal allied minefield in the
00:17:47.279 --> 00:17:50.099
late afternoon just to have a chance of reaching
00:17:50.099 --> 00:17:53.140
the Yugoslavian island of Vis by dawn. And the
00:17:53.140 --> 00:17:54.980
timing there is absolutely critical because the
00:17:54.980 --> 00:17:57.480
moment the sun comes up the German Luftwaffe
00:17:57.480 --> 00:17:59.619
patrols will be scanning the coastline. And a
00:17:59.619 --> 00:18:01.839
100 -foot schooner isn't exactly subtle. Not
00:18:01.839 --> 00:18:03.940
at all. So how do you hide a fleet of wooden
00:18:03.940 --> 00:18:06.359
ships from airplanes? You back them into these
00:18:06.359 --> 00:18:09.160
precipitous razor -thin hidden coves along the
00:18:09.160 --> 00:18:12.660
coast. Then Hamilton and his partisans would
00:18:12.660 --> 00:18:15.799
chop down massive pine boughs and physically
00:18:15.799 --> 00:18:18.480
weave them through the ships rigging. Just camouflaging
00:18:18.480 --> 00:18:21.059
an entire ship with trees. Yeah, they festooned
00:18:21.059 --> 00:18:23.740
the masts with foliage to blend the vessels into
00:18:23.740 --> 00:18:26.079
the tree line. Then they'd unload the weapons
00:18:26.079 --> 00:18:28.759
under the cover of darkness, re -camouflage the
00:18:28.759 --> 00:18:31.410
ships, and try to slip back to Italy. The sheer
00:18:31.410 --> 00:18:34.130
mechanical terror of navigating a minefield in
00:18:34.130 --> 00:18:37.549
the dark on a wooden boat packed with ammo, trip
00:18:37.549 --> 00:18:40.089
after trip. Right, I have to ask, what kind of
00:18:40.089 --> 00:18:42.690
drive does that take? It is the ultimate antidote
00:18:42.690 --> 00:18:45.690
to the safety of a Hollywood soundstage. It requires
00:18:45.690 --> 00:18:48.660
a level of absolute unblanking commitment to
00:18:48.660 --> 00:18:50.619
the present moment. There are no retakes out
00:18:50.619 --> 00:18:52.920
there. Exactly. If you miss a cue on a movie
00:18:52.920 --> 00:18:55.039
set, a director yells cut and you do another
00:18:55.039 --> 00:18:58.079
take. If you miss a cue in a minefield, you and
00:18:58.079 --> 00:19:00.980
your entire crew are vaporized. And he didn't
00:19:00.980 --> 00:19:04.259
just stay on the boats either. In 1944, he actually
00:19:04.259 --> 00:19:07.000
parachuted into Yugoslavia. He finally got to
00:19:07.000 --> 00:19:10.160
use that SOE training. He did. He organized the
00:19:10.160 --> 00:19:13.339
rescue of 26 downed American airmen, which included
00:19:13.339 --> 00:19:15.720
11 nurses who had been forced down in German
00:19:15.720 --> 00:19:18.829
-held Albania. he led them through hostile territory
00:19:18.829 --> 00:19:21.450
to safety and earned a Silver Star for gallantry.
00:19:21.650 --> 00:19:24.509
He really became a genuine, undeniable war hero.
00:19:24.769 --> 00:19:28.230
He did. John Hamilton was the real deal. He achieved
00:19:28.230 --> 00:19:30.750
the exact reality he had been searching for.
00:19:31.430 --> 00:19:34.690
But here's the tragic twist of his life. Yeah,
00:19:34.769 --> 00:19:37.269
this part is tough. The very experiences that
00:19:37.269 --> 00:19:39.430
finally gave him a sense of profound purpose.
00:19:39.880 --> 00:19:42.839
his search for authenticity, and his deep admiration
00:19:42.839 --> 00:19:45.539
for the grit of those partisans that would all
00:19:45.539 --> 00:19:47.559
be weaponized against him the moment the war
00:19:47.559 --> 00:19:50.579
ended. So the war ends, the Cold War begins,
00:19:50.759 --> 00:19:53.920
and the world just shifts dramatically. Hayden
00:19:53.920 --> 00:19:57.000
returns to the United States. He and Madeleine
00:19:57.000 --> 00:19:59.039
Carroll realize their marriage was built on the
00:19:59.039 --> 00:20:02.049
intensity of the war. and they divorce amicably.
00:20:02.329 --> 00:20:04.609
And he reluctantly goes back to Hollywood. Back
00:20:04.609 --> 00:20:06.950
to the makeup chair, taking on those legendary
00:20:06.950 --> 00:20:09.869
roles just to pay the bills. But he is a changed
00:20:09.869 --> 00:20:13.509
man. Very much so. In 1946, still deeply moved
00:20:13.509 --> 00:20:15.950
by the egalitarian toughness of the Yugoslav
00:20:15.950 --> 00:20:18.509
partisans he fought alongside, he actually joins
00:20:18.509 --> 00:20:20.750
the American Communist Party. We really need
00:20:20.750 --> 00:20:22.710
to contextualize this membership, though. It
00:20:22.710 --> 00:20:25.150
was incredibly brief, exactly six months. Just
00:20:25.150 --> 00:20:27.970
a blip. He attended a handful of meetings, found
00:20:27.970 --> 00:20:30.609
that he completely detested the rigid dogma and
00:20:30.609 --> 00:20:33.450
the political rhetoric. And he just walked away.
00:20:34.009 --> 00:20:36.769
It was a temporary exploration fueled by his
00:20:36.769 --> 00:20:40.009
wartime nostalgia, not some lifelong ideological
00:20:40.009 --> 00:20:41.869
commitment. But in the paranoid climate of the
00:20:41.869 --> 00:20:44.509
late 1940s, six months was a death sentence for
00:20:44.509 --> 00:20:47.309
a career. Oh, absolutely. The Red Scare is suffocating
00:20:47.309 --> 00:20:50.289
the country. J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI flag
00:20:50.289 --> 00:20:53.450
that brief membership. And soon enough, Sterling
00:20:53.450 --> 00:20:55.910
Hayden is hauled before the House Un -American
00:20:55.910 --> 00:20:58.950
Activities Committee, UAC. and the environment
00:20:58.950 --> 00:21:01.910
of those hearings was meticulously designed to
00:21:01.910 --> 00:21:04.470
break people. How so? You are sitting in a cramped
00:21:04.470 --> 00:21:07.630
room, flash bulbs exploding in your face, surrounded
00:21:07.630 --> 00:21:11.269
by powerful men in suits asking loaded trap questions.
00:21:11.769 --> 00:21:13.730
They are just threatening his acting career either.
00:21:13.849 --> 00:21:15.710
Right. They are threatening him with federal
00:21:15.710 --> 00:21:18.470
prison time and the loss of custody of his children.
00:21:18.670 --> 00:21:20.769
But how does a guy like that break? How does
00:21:20.769 --> 00:21:23.309
a commando who willingly sailed high explosives
00:21:23.309 --> 00:21:25.990
past German blockades, a man who jumped out of
00:21:25.990 --> 00:21:28.410
planes into enemy territory, just fold under
00:21:28.410 --> 00:21:31.720
the pressure of a few politicians in suits? Because
00:21:31.720 --> 00:21:34.779
he did fold. He cooperated entirely. He gave
00:21:34.779 --> 00:21:37.160
them the names of his peers in Hollywood who
00:21:37.160 --> 00:21:39.279
had attended those meetings. If we connect this
00:21:39.279 --> 00:21:41.799
to the bigger picture, it really requires us
00:21:41.799 --> 00:21:44.240
to understand how different types of pressure
00:21:44.240 --> 00:21:47.319
affect the human mind. What do you mean? Think
00:21:47.319 --> 00:21:49.200
of it like the structural integrity of a submarine.
00:21:50.099 --> 00:21:52.640
A submarine is engineered to withstand the crushing,
00:21:52.980 --> 00:21:55.079
violent physical pressure of the deep ocean.
00:21:55.420 --> 00:21:58.619
It can survive depth charges. But if you expose
00:21:58.619 --> 00:22:01.619
that exact same submarine to a slow, creeping,
00:22:01.740 --> 00:22:05.039
chemical corrosion, the hull rots away and it
00:22:05.039 --> 00:22:06.960
completely falls apart. That is a great way of
00:22:06.960 --> 00:22:09.200
putting it. The physical courage he mastered
00:22:09.200 --> 00:22:11.720
in the Adriatic Sea just didn't translate to
00:22:11.720 --> 00:22:13.660
the psychological warfare of a congressional
00:22:13.660 --> 00:22:16.720
hearing. Precisely. John Hamilton, the operative,
00:22:17.339 --> 00:22:19.180
thrived against a physical enemy he could see
00:22:19.180 --> 00:22:22.549
and fight. But Sterling Hayden, the actor, was
00:22:22.549 --> 00:22:25.369
outmaneuvered by a murky, manipulative theater
00:22:25.369 --> 00:22:27.329
of political performance. He didn't know how
00:22:27.329 --> 00:22:29.769
to fight in a suit. Right. He was terrified of
00:22:29.769 --> 00:22:32.690
losing his family, yes, but he was also completely
00:22:32.690 --> 00:22:35.250
disoriented by a battlefield that relied entirely
00:22:35.250 --> 00:22:38.529
on smoke and mirrors. And the betrayal just shattered
00:22:38.529 --> 00:22:40.970
his own sense of self. He wrote about it years
00:22:40.970 --> 00:22:43.869
later in his autobiography, and the raw guilt
00:22:43.869 --> 00:22:46.589
is staggering to read. What did he write? He
00:22:46.589 --> 00:22:48.710
said, I don't think you have the foggiest notion
00:22:48.710 --> 00:22:51.190
of the contempt I have had for myself since the
00:22:51.190 --> 00:22:54.990
day I did that thing. Wow. It painted him forever.
00:22:55.509 --> 00:22:57.690
He spent years proving he wasn't a Hollywood
00:22:57.690 --> 00:22:59.930
fraud, only to realize he had played the role
00:22:59.930 --> 00:23:02.549
of the coward when it mattered most in peacetime.
00:23:02.670 --> 00:23:05.890
So what does this all mean for you as the listener?
00:23:06.029 --> 00:23:08.869
How do you reconcile a life with such jagged
00:23:08.869 --> 00:23:11.549
edges? You risk everything to save strangers
00:23:11.549 --> 00:23:13.609
in one chapter of your life, and then you fail
00:23:13.609 --> 00:23:15.970
your own moral code to save yourself in the next.
00:23:16.170 --> 00:23:18.890
It forces us to confront the uncomfortable reality
00:23:18.890 --> 00:23:21.329
that courage is not a permanent state of being.
00:23:21.710 --> 00:23:23.809
It is highly situational. Yeah, you can't just
00:23:23.809 --> 00:23:26.730
bank it. No. The bravery required to charge a
00:23:26.730 --> 00:23:28.670
machine gun nest is fundamentally different from
00:23:28.670 --> 00:23:30.630
the moral fortitude required to face down your
00:23:30.630 --> 00:23:33.079
own government and protect your community. Hayden
00:23:33.079 --> 00:23:36.160
was a master of physical reality, but the abstract
00:23:36.160 --> 00:23:39.279
ideological warfare of the 1950s defeated him
00:23:39.279 --> 00:23:41.619
completely. Through all of this, he maintained
00:23:41.619 --> 00:23:44.460
he was never really an actor. He insisted to
00:23:44.460 --> 00:23:47.039
his dying day that he was just a sailor and a
00:23:47.039 --> 00:23:49.000
writer who only stepped in front of a camera
00:23:49.000 --> 00:23:51.579
to finance his boats. Though his filmography
00:23:51.579 --> 00:23:53.720
says otherwise. Right. Despite his protests,
00:23:53.839 --> 00:23:56.799
he is immoralized as a cinema icon. His personal
00:23:56.799 --> 00:23:59.619
life was a mess. Three marriages, constant financial
00:23:59.619 --> 00:24:02.500
trouble. But he lived an utterly unmatched life
00:24:02.500 --> 00:24:05.359
of adventure before he passed away from cancer
00:24:05.359 --> 00:24:10.839
in 1986. He truly packed multiple wildly contradictory
00:24:10.839 --> 00:24:14.299
lifetimes into 70 years. He really did. And that
00:24:14.299 --> 00:24:16.259
brings us to the end of our deep dive today.
00:24:16.440 --> 00:24:18.299
But before you go, I want to leave you with a
00:24:18.299 --> 00:24:20.480
final thought to mull over on your own. Let's
00:24:20.480 --> 00:24:22.700
hear it. Hayden spent his entire life running
00:24:22.700 --> 00:24:25.079
away from the make -believe of Hollywood. He
00:24:25.079 --> 00:24:27.119
was desperate to find something solid, something
00:24:27.119 --> 00:24:30.259
real. But consider his path. It is a path defined
00:24:30.259 --> 00:24:33.380
by constant reinvention. Exactly. He was the
00:24:33.380 --> 00:24:35.720
troubled kid fleeing a fake rich family, the
00:24:35.720 --> 00:24:37.779
Hollywood idol, the British commando in training,
00:24:37.940 --> 00:24:40.339
the Marine private, the officer, John Hamilton,
00:24:40.380 --> 00:24:43.660
the spy, and finally the informant. Was he actually
00:24:43.660 --> 00:24:46.339
confronting reality by taking on all these lives
00:24:46.339 --> 00:24:49.599
or by constantly throwing away one mask to immediately
00:24:49.599 --> 00:24:51.960
put on another? Was he just endlessly casting
00:24:51.960 --> 00:24:54.460
himself a new role so he never had to face the
00:24:54.460 --> 00:24:56.599
real Sterling Hayden? The man who hated acting
00:24:56.599 --> 00:24:59.480
turned the entire world into his stage. A stage
00:24:59.480 --> 00:25:01.859
where the stakes were life and death. Thank you
00:25:01.859 --> 00:25:04.420
for joining us on this deep dive. Stay curious
00:25:04.420 --> 00:25:07.720
and always question the facade. And I want to
00:25:07.720 --> 00:25:09.740
thank everybody for listening to Veterans Radio
00:25:09.740 --> 00:25:13.160
today. I am Jim Fossone. It's been a pleasure
00:25:13.160 --> 00:25:15.779
to be your host. I'm a Veterans Disability Lawyer
00:25:15.779 --> 00:25:18.539
at Legal Help for Veterans and you can reach
00:25:18.539 --> 00:25:24.519
us at 800 -693 -4800 or legalhelpforveterans
00:25:24.519 --> 00:25:27.730
.com on the web. You can follow Veterans Radio
00:25:27.730 --> 00:25:31.009
on Facebook and listen to its podcasts and internet
00:25:31.009 --> 00:25:35.630
radio shows by visiting us at veteransradio .org.
00:25:35.750 --> 00:25:39.130
That's veteransradio .org. We would again want
00:25:39.130 --> 00:25:42.130
to thank our national sponsors, the National
00:25:42.130 --> 00:25:46.069
Veterans Business Development Council, nvbdc
00:25:46.069 --> 00:25:51.150
.org. Legal Help for Veterans, a veterans disability
00:25:51.150 --> 00:25:55.150
law firm with a national practice before The
00:25:55.150 --> 00:25:58.849
VA can help you on your claims and your appeals.
00:25:59.970 --> 00:26:03.150
It can be reached at legalhelpforveterans .com
00:26:03.150 --> 00:26:09.130
or 1 -800 -693 -4800. We also want to thank our
00:26:09.130 --> 00:26:13.990
local sponsors. This would include the Charles
00:26:13.990 --> 00:26:17.950
S. Kettles chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of
00:26:17.950 --> 00:26:22.680
America. That's chapter 310. VFW Graf O 'Hara,
00:26:22.839 --> 00:26:26.519
Post 423, the American Legion, Erwin Preskin,
00:26:26.720 --> 00:26:30.180
Post 46 in Ann Arbor as well, the VA Ann Arbor
00:26:30.180 --> 00:26:33.079
Health Care System, and certainly the National
00:26:33.079 --> 00:26:36.160
Vietnam Veterans of America Association. You
00:26:36.160 --> 00:26:39.140
can be a sponsor by going to veteransradio .org,
00:26:39.440 --> 00:26:43.339
clicking on the About Us and our sponsors, and
00:26:43.339 --> 00:26:46.779
help us out. Keep this program alive for the
00:26:46.779 --> 00:26:51.359
21 and 22 years. Keep us going for another 20.
00:26:51.390 --> 00:26:52.009
Thank you.
